3D Modelling Tool to Optimise Advanced Plasmonic Luminescent Solar Devices for Building Integrated Photovoltaic Applications

Abstract

This research concentrates on modelling and optimisation of a static building integrated PV (BIPV) component in which both direct and diffuse solar radiation are harvested through luminescent solar (LS) devices. Plasmonic coupling between luminescent species such as quantum dots (QD), organic dyes, and metal nanoparticles (MNPs) have been investigated and modelled for their application in plasmonically enhanced luminescent solar (pLS) devices to concentrate and convert both direct and diffuse solar radiation to the wavelength region spectrally matched with the PV cell. A 3D Monte Carlo ray tracing (MCRT) algorithm has been developed to analyse the optical properties of LS device. Moreover, plasmonic modelling of MNPs were undertaken using a 3D finite difference time domain (FDTD) method. The combination of MCRT and FDTD achievements were used in a novel mathematical model and algorithm to develop the first comprehensive 3D tool (referred as PEDAL program) which can optimise and investigate both LS and pLS devices. A new optimised FDTD (OFDTD) model has been developed which reduces the total memory requirement of the modelling by ~52%. As regards PEDAL, several proposed methods improved the modelling performance e.g. in a modelling with ~125k incident ray, the simulation time was decreased from ~6400 minutes to only ~3 minutes without mitigating the modelling accuracy. In addition to pLS device modelling, PEDAL was also used to model the optical properties of a variety of LS device configurations where the modelling results were found in close agreement with experimental outcomes. Overall, ~96% average modelling accuracy was achieved. Finally, a new structure has been proposed using pLS device in a large scale BIPV component which not only gives the designer the ability to control the building?s interior and exterior visual comfort but also guaranties the optimisation of the BIPV component with any required size and shape of the interest.